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Saturday, December 07, 2013

Launched in 2008, the
Children’s Dental Policy arm of The Pew Charitable Trusts is using its political
clout and money, coupled with misinformation and untruths, to promote
fluoridation initiatives and preserve existing schemes in many cities and
states.

According to Pew’s
fluoridation promoter Matt Jacob (Ref 1), Pew’s outreach to states for community
water fluoridation (CWF) included the following:

Arkansas: “Funded a poll and offered other assistance to pass a state
mandate in 2011.”

California: “Provided assistance to a successful campaign to secure CWF
in San Jose.”

Montana: “Assisted successful effort to preserve CWF in the city of
Bozeman.”

New Hampshire: “Helped defeat a statewide ban on
CWF.”

Oregon: “Offering funds and research for a campaign in
Portland."

Wisconsin: “Provided research and technical assistance to preserve CWF in
Milwaukee.”

Pew loses in Wichita and
PortlandHowever, PEW’s PR, money and
devious tactics lost big time to common sense and truth in Portland Oregon and
Wichita Kansas when voters rejected fluoridation in referenda in both towns with
a margin of 60% to 40%.

Buying
votesIn Portland the
pro-fluoridation team –aided by PEW - outspent citizens opposed to fluoridation
3 to 1 and gave at
least $143,000 to local minority groups who supported fluoridation. These five groups each received $20,000:
Urban League of Portland, the Latino Network, the Asian Pacific American Network
of Oregon, Center for Intercultural Organizing, and the Immigrant & Refugee
Community Organization. The Oregon Latino Health Coalition got $5,000, while the
Native American Youth and Family Center received $37,810. The Portland chapter
of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who
opposed fluoridation, received nothing (Ref 2).

Pew hires Willam
MaasIn an effort to sway voters
and decision makers, Pew has hired as its fluoridation adviser, dentist William
Maas, former head of the CDC’s Oral Health Division. Those credentials may look
impressive on paper but not in person. When grilled by the Sedgwick (KS) County
Commission, he looked nervous and admitted that the so-called “mild” fluorosis
(in this category 50% of the enamel of the affected teeth is impacted) occurs
even in children who live in non-fluoridated communities, and then he actually
claimed fluorosis is attractive. (Watch the
hearing – Maas speaks at 31:00
minutes).This remark angered a
Sedgwick Commissioner who says others may not find it so attractive. The
Sedgwick Commissioner was right. Studies have repeatedly found that
children
find teeth with so-called “mild” fluorosis to be
objectionable – a point that even the
CDC, Maas’s old boss, has conceded.

The Sedgwick Commissioner
added:

“If I found on my daughter’s teeth a substance that is abnormal, caused
by chemicals introduced in our water supply … I’d be beyond irritated,” Skelton
said. “I would wonder what internal effects would be going on, what kind of
white spots is she going to have on her bones, etc. That’s a symptom of
something larger, sir (Ref 3).”

Pew spokesperson Bill Maas insults
opponent but won’t debateIn another appearance in
Wichita a citizen asked Maas if he would debate the head of FAN, retired
environmental chemistry Professor Paul Connett. He refused saying that Connett
was a brilliant debater and he (Maas) had only given about 6 public
presentations. But then he added that Connett was “the leader of misinformation
on this issue in the country.” This didn’t sit well with citizens at the
meeting, most recognizing that you shouldn’t insult someone if you are not
prepared to take that person on in public when
challenged.

Pew continues to mislead the public
on the Harvard IQ studyIn
the Pew
Children's Dental Campaign October 2013 letter to Des Moines Water Works (Ref
4) Shelly Gehshan, Director, Children’s
Dental Policy continues to misrepresent and misreport the fluoride/IQ
studies conducted by a Harvard team
(Choi et al., 2012) even though FAN and others have corrected her
misrepresentations in
media release. Gehshan wrote the essentially the same misinformation in a July 2013 letter to The Dalles (Oregon)

Pew’s Gehshan confuses concentration
and doseMs. Gehshan
writes that the “levels of fluoride
in the water” (i.e. concentration) in the IQ studies were at least “four
or five times higher than the level used to fluoridate water in Des Moines” (Ref
4) thus continuing to confuse the difference between concentration
(measured in mg of fluoride per liter) and dose (measured in mg fluoride
ingested per day). The latter depends upon how much water people drink and how
much fluoride they get from other sources. According to Paul Connett,
“An above average water drinker in a fluoridated community, and also getting
fluoride from other sources, could easily get more fluoride than a below average
water consumer in several of the Chinese studies.”

The need for margin of safety
ignored by GehshanConnett adds, “To make
matters worse Gehshan’s simplistic comparison ignored the larger concern for the
need to apply a margin of safety to a dose that has been found to cause harm in
order to protect the most vulnerable children in a large population. For this a
safety factor of 10 is usually chosen. The job of people in regulatory agencies
is to make sure they are protecting everyone not just the average person.
Gehshan should know that.”

A false
chargeGehshan also repeated the
false charge that “the Harvard researchers [Grandjean and
Choi] publicly
distanced themselves from the way that anti-fluoride groups were misrepresenting
these IQ studies.” In actual fact Choi and Grandjean tried to distance
themselves from comments made by a
Wichita journalist who claimed that the Harvard team thought the study was
irrelevant to U.S. populations.

The truth,
Grandjean
writes, is that "only 4 of 27
studies" in the Harvard review used had high water fluoride levels, and "clear
differences" in IQ "were found at much lower
exposures."

One of the first tactics of
fluoridation promotion, as advised by Pew’s PR fluoridation specialist Matt
Jacob, is to identify a problem and lead with a
need. So Portland fluoridation promoters claimed that
non-fluoridated Portland has more tooth decay than fluoridated portions of
Oregon. An ABC-TV investigative
reporter looked into this claim and
found it to be untrue. In fact, non-fluoridated Portland children actually have
less tooth decay than those in fluoridated areas.

Pew sullying its
reputationFor many people who have
respected the Pew Charitable Trusts on other issues, its cavalier disregard of
the possibility that a practice that Pew is advocating – in the name of
improving children’s health - may actually be lowering children’s IQ is very
disturbing. Especially so since this Foundation claims on its
website:

The Pew
Charitable Trusts is driven by the power of knowledge
to solve today's most challenging problems. Pew applies a rigorous, analytical
approach to improve public policy, inform the public and stimulate civic life.

In
conclusionThe problem when advocates -
with a lot of money to spend - hire a PR firm to present their side of the story
is that truth and honest science go out of the window. Winning is everything.
That’s what the PR firm is paid to do. That is what Pew is trying to do. But
citizen power is capable of beating this “machine” when the truth is on their
side and they are prepared to organize as the citizens in Wichita and Portland
did. FAN was pleased to help.

Wednesday, October 02, 2013

Tooth
decay is a growing US epidemic (1) despite almost 7
decades of water fluoridation reaching record numbers of Americans and
despite fluoridated toothpaste occuping 95% of the market.

While
fluoride-overdose symptoms (discolored teeth or dental fluorosis) escalate
fluoride isn’t doing much to prevent cavities. The CDC reports that up to
60% of US adolescentsare afflicted with dental fluorosis. Yet, 51% have cavities, even though 41% of them have sealants.

Unrelated
to and despite fluoridation, tooth decay is clearly a disease of poverty and
malnutrition. In fact, new
research indicates that people living in areas with fluoridated
water and/or using fluoride toothpaste still get cavities and that, when
less than 10% of total calories in the diet is made up of free sugars, there
are much lower levels of tooth decay.

Fluoridation was implemented to preserve
teeth, save money and put dentists out of business.But none of that happened. Only politics and
money keeps fluoridation alive. Science doesn’t.

The Bureau of Labor
Statistics reports, employment of dentists is expected to grow by 21
percent from 2010 to 2020, faster than the average for all occupations.

Over
a quarter (28%) of US 2-5 year-olds have tooth decay - a 15% jump from a decade
earlier (2) Fluoridation even
fails to protect low income children – 48% of preschoolers from low-income
households experienced tooth decay and 35% had untreated cavities (compared to
11.4% and 6% of preschoolers from higher income households, respectively) (1b)

To
compare, only 25% of England’s five-year-olds have
cavities (4) yet, only 11% of England’s water supplies are
fluoridated and children’s toothpaste is sold at half the fluoride
concentration of US brands.

The
US lags behind 10 other,
mostly non-fluoridated, peer countries in cavity rates, according to WHO
statistics. (4a) And, a state of decay flourishes among older Americans, according
to a report by Oral Health America. (1a)

In
Connecticut, the 4th richest state, fluoridation is state-mandated
since the 1960’s. Yet, 35% of white children, 50% of African American and 50% of
Hispanic children have cavities – even though 42%, 35% and 49% have
dental sealants, respectively. Up to 57% of low-income third graders have tooth decay, 18%
untreated, despite an increase in Medicaid utilization. (4b) The CDC gave the state of Connecticut a $1.5
million grant to improve dental health in September 2013.

In
Minnesota, where fluoridation is also state
mandated, 72% of low-income third-graders have tooth decay compared to 46% of
non-poor. Between 2007 and 2010, Minnesota reported $148 million
in emergency charges for preventable, non-traumatic dental care.(4c)

In
Oregon, 52% of first, second and third graders
in fluoridated areas had one or more cavities but only 48% in the
non-fluoridated Oregon city of Portland. (4d)

Published research shows
that Kentucky, the most fluoridated state (99.9%) exceeds the
US average for dental health problems as 13% of adults aged over 18 years are
missing all of their teeth, compared to 6% nationally, placing Kentucky as the
nation’s highest percentage of toothless persons.

Forty-three percent of Kentucky’s under
five-year-olds have severe early childhood dental decay. And, 50% of
second graders and nearly 75% of 15 year olds in Kentucky have
cavities.

The New York Times reported that dentists
across the US say they are seeing more preschoolers at all income levels with 6
to 10 cavities or more (5)CBS reported that "More preschoolers are
showing up to dentists with 10 cavities or more.” (5a)

“’We
have had a huge increase in kids going to the operating room,’ said Dr.
Jonathan Shenkin, a pediatric dentist in Augusta, Me., and a spokesman for
the American Dental Association. ‘We’re treating more kids more aggressively
earlier,’” reported the NY Times.

In
fact, the more highly fluoridated New YorkState counties have a greater
number of 3- to 5-year-olds making tooth decay emergency department visits when
compared to non-fluoridated counties. (See Below**)

Dental-related
hospital emergency care more than doubled from 2000 to 2010, from 1 million to
2.3 million, and that doesn’t include seniors 65 and older (National Center for
Health Statistics).(7)
The highest number were for 18-44 year-olds.

Between
2000-2008 there were 61,439 hospitalizations for tooth infections in the US, an increase of 41%
from 2000 to 2008.Sixty-six died; 89%
occurred on an emergency/urgent basis; average age - 37 years-old.(Journal of Endodontics) (9)

Average
annual out-of-pocket costs for dental services in the U.S. rose 26% from 1996 to
2010. (9a)

General Accounting Office (GAO) reported in 2008,
“Extent of Dental Disease in Children Has Not Decreased, and Millions Are
Estimated to Have Untreated Tooth Decay.” GAO estimates that 6.5 million
children aged 2 through 18 in Medicaid had untreated tooth decay.

The
most highly fluoridated US states are home to
residents with the fewest teeth. For example,

Nationally,
16% of low-income non-elderly American adults (aged 18-64) lost six or more
teeth, according to The Commonwealth Fund report, (10)

The report,
”Health Care in the Two Americas," found big gaps between the lowest- and
highest-performing states. For instance, low-income adults in 92% fluoridated
West Virginia are far more likely to lose six or more teeth to decay or disease
compared to 11% fluoridated Hawaii and 33% fluoridated Utah.(11)

Thirty-four
percent of low-income older adults
(65-74) lost all their teeth compared
to 13% of non-poor. (NationalCenter for Health Statistics
Data Brief No. 104, August 2012) (12) Not counting
wisdom teeth, 71% of adults, age 45-64, don’t have a full set of teeth. This
includes 81% of Hispanics, 89% of Blacks and 65% of whites.

Sen.
Bernie Sanders and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings introduced legislation addressing
this dental crisis. The bills – which would expand dental coverage through
Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act and the Department of Veterans
Affairs and increase the dental work force – were filed one week after a new
government study documented skyrocketing costs and limited access to dental
care. (13)

The
Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that Americans spent about $108
billion on dentists in an inflation-adjusted increase from $64 billion in 1996.
Forty-two percent of adults with tooth or mouth problems did not see a dentist
in 2008 because they did not have dental insurance or could not afford the
out-of-pocket payments.And 4 million
children did not obtain needed dental care because their families could not
afford it.(14)

GAO's
analysis showed that average annual dental out-of-pocket payments increased 26
percent, adjusted for inflation – 21% for the privately insured and 32% for the
non-insured.

In
2007, 12-year-old Deamonte Driver’s death from an untreated cavity, that
festered and grew to attack his brain, first brought this dentist-deficiency to
the nation’s attention. About two dozen dentists refused to treat him and
$250,000 in public funds and a two week hospital stay couldn’t save his life.
We’ve now learned that at least 66 Americans died in hospitals because of
untreated tooth decay.(15)

Fluoridation Wastes Time and Money

Despite
way too many money- and time-wasting conferences, congressional hearings,
meetings, symposiums, reports, press conferences, studies and coalition-building
among and between government agencies,industry and organized dentistry including hundreds of millions of
dollars wasted on fluoridation schemes throughout the country, very little has
alleviated America's rotting teeth and rotting dental care industry.

Organized
dentistry peddles more fluoride, making their corporate sponsors wealthier. But
they continue to lobby against viable solutions such as Dental Therapists,
which are to dentists what physicians’ assistants are to physicians.
Dental Therapists have worked successfully for decades in other first world
countries with two years’ training. Only a well-funded persistent dental lobby
keeps them from working more extensively in the US.

Fluoridation
began in the 1945 when it was virtually the only fluoride source. Now
fluoridated toothpaste is 95% of the market and is a multi-billion dollar
international money-maker for powerful corporations. A myriad of fluoride
dental products is on the market. So it’s no wonder that the US Centers for
Disease Control now reports that up to 60% of adolescents are
fluoride-overdosed and afflicted with dental fluorosis – white spotted, yellow,
brown and/or pitted teeth. Yet, 51% of them still have tooth decay.

*92%
of West Virginia is fluoridated;
92% of Tennessee; 80% of Alabama; 55% of Mississippi, and 99.9% of Kentucky)

**In
75% fluoridated New YorkState, 66 per 10,000 tooth
decay emergency department (ED) visits were made by 3-5 year olds.But, in the non-fluoridated counties of
Nassau, Suffolk and Rockland, the rate is much lower (23, 45 and 25
respectively) ED visits per 10,000 (ages 3-5) in highly water fluoridated
counties, Monroe, Erie, Chemung, Broome, Wayne, and Ontario is 102, 66, 69, 182,
92, and 82, respectively.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

A 7/2/2013 letter signed by Shelly Gehshan of the Pew Foundation to The Dalles, Oregon, Mayor and City Council contains many falsehoods. The most egregious is her dismissal of Harvard research
showing a link between fluoride and lower IQ. Gehshan wrote the
following:

“anti-fluoride groups claim that fluoride causes lower
IQ scores in children, but many of the studies they cite were from areas in
China, Mongolia and Iran in which the natural fluoride levels were at least four
or five times higher than the level used to fluoridate water in The Dalles. One
study including fluoride levels that reached as high as 11.5 milligrams per
liter – a concentration that is roughly 10 times higher than the level that is
used to fluoridate American communities. In addition, the Harvard researchers
who examined these IQ studies found that each of the studies “had deficiencies,
in some cases rather serious, which limit the conclusions that can be drawn.” 17
Furthermore, the Harvard researchers publicly distanced themselves from the way
that anti-fluoride groups were misrepresenting these IQ studies.18
Anti-fluoride groups also ignore historical evidence that undermines their claim
– between the 1940s and the 1990s, the average IQ scores of Americans improved
15 points while fluoridation steadily expanded to serve millions of additional
people 19.”

When Gehshan writes, “the Harvard
researchers (Grandjean et. al) publicly distanced themselves from the way that
anti-fluoride groups were misrepresenting these IQ studies,” she uses an
error-laden Wichita KS newspaper article as a reference which some believe was
ghost-written by Pew’s fluoridation Public Relations employee.

The truth is that Harvard
scientist, Philippe Grandjean, MD,
states the newspaper never "checked
their information with the authors, even though statements were attributed to
them."

Dr. Philippe Grandjean, the senior scientist
on the Harvard team, criticized the Wichita paper for deceptively attributing
its own conclusions on fluoridation to the Harvard scientists. Fluoridation's
potential to produce "chemical brain drain," Grandjean writes, is an issue that
"definitely deserves concern."Grandjean also takes objection to the Wichita
paper's claim that the Harvard review only looked at studies that used "very
high levels of fluoride." The Wichita paper conveyed this impression by focusing
on a single, cherry-picked study (Hu 1989) that was never published, nor even
included in the Harvard review.The truth, Grandjean writes, is that "only 4
of 27 studies" in the Harvard review used the high levels that the Wichita paper
described, and "clear differences" in IQ "were found at much lower
exposures."

Vested interests
caused decades to pass before children were protected from the brain-damaging
effects of lead exposure reported in the literature. We unnecessarily lost a
generation to lead-induced brain damage, reports Grandjean.

When Grandjean’s research team
published a careful review of studies (meta-analysis) linking fluoride to children’s lower
IQ,
worried fluoridation promoters and regulators immediately and incorrectly
claimed that only excessive exposures are toxic, the effect is insignificant,
decades of fluoridation would have revealed brain deficits (although nobody
looked, yet), and that it was probably lead and arsenic that lowered IQ, not
fluoride. Example here

“When such a misleading fuselage is aimed at the
authors of a careful meta-analysis of 27 different studies, what would it take
to convince critics like that,” asks Grandjean.

Thirty-seven human studies now link fluoride to
children's lowered IQ, some at levels considered safe in the US. See:
http://www.fluoridealert.org/articles/iq-facts/ and that no research on fluoride’s human brain effects have ever
been conducted in the US

Tuesday, June 04, 2013

Fluoridation, the addition of fluoride chemicals
into public water supplies, began 68 years ago promising to eradicate tooth
decay, lower dental bills, and put dentists out of
business.

Instead, tooth decay rates
and dental bills are rising, more dental professionals were created, more dental
schools opened, both fluoridated dental products and tooth decay have become
multi-billion dollar international industries. And fluoride-overdose, dental
fluorosis, is the new epidemic facing America’s children, along with UNtreated tooth decay.

The
following fluoride-related stories occurred in 2012 adding to the alarming body of evidence
proving fluoridation is not safe, not effective and not
wanted:

-- New Hampshire
Passes First State-Wide Fluoride Warning
Law“if your child under the age
of 6 months is exclusively consuming infant formula reconstituted with
fluoridated water, there may be an increased chance of dental
fluorosis.”

--37 studies link
fluoride to reduced IQ in human populations. FANlocated
obtained, and — in many cases — translated these studies.FANalso
identified dozens of other studies which correlate fluoride exposure with

Fluoridationists continually
misrepresent this research. So, Grandjean corrects them on his own
blog,
“Chemical brain drain should not be disregarded. The average IQ deficit in
children exposed to increased levels of fluoride in drinking water was found to
correspond to about 7 points – a sizable difference. To which extent this risk
applies to fluoridation in Wichita or Portland or elsewhere is uncertain, but definitely
deserves concern.”

-- Crescent City,
California stops
fluoridation partially because
no fluoridation chemical manufacturer or distributor could provide required
safety studies. They join fluoridation-free Poughkeepsie, NY;
Selmer, Tennessee and the Carroll-Boone Water District employees,
Arkansas in asking for but failing to receive this
necessary documentation.

-- “the average number of decayed, missing or filled teeth in
12-year-olds was higher in the United States than in 11 peer countries (and
three nonpeer countries)” behind 13 countries that do not
fluoridate public water supplies according to a National Research Report.

-- Dentists are trained to use politics and not
science to promote water fluoridation, according to a Journal of the American Dental
Association article. The authors write: "Studies of dentists' attitudes about
water fluoridation suggest that a lack of knowledge and preparedness are
barriers to discussing the topic ... more than one-half of the respondents
believed they needed more information and training on the issue…Dentists’ lack
of self-efficacy with respect to critically evaluating scientific literature may
help to explain their reluctance to promote
fluoridation”

-- Public Relations fluoridation-promoter
strategist, Matt Jacob paid by the Pew Foundation, teaches fluoridationists to focus on teeth and not
health. “Opponents are likely to win if the dialogue is trapped” on
Harms and Risks, he says.

--
New York City
Fluoridation Opposition Rally held by Council Member Peter Vallone, Jr.
on city hall steps. Local school
children studied the issue and protest the continued addition of fluoride
chemicals into their bodies via NYC’s water supply without their
consent.

“As the
I-Team dug into the science behind the fluoride controversy, we found study
after study dating back to the 80s from respected academic and scientific
institutions that connect fluoride to health dangers.”

-- Exposure to fluoride
suppresses the production of certain cells that resorb bone, and
account for osteosclerosis, an
increase in bone density, the major clinical manifestation of skeletal
fluorosis, according to a report in the journal Fluoride(Vol. 45, No. 2,
2012)

-- Postmenopausal women drinking water with 2.0
parts per million fluoride suffered significantly greater oxidative stress on
their bones than women drinking
water in a village with a low amount of fluoride, researchers reported in the
same issue of the journal Fluoride (pp.
108-115).

--- “Some infant foods/drinks, when reconstituted
with fluoridated water, may result in a F intake in infants above the suggested
optimum range and therefore may put infants at risk of developing dental
fluorosis” Community Dentistry and Oral
Epidemiology,

-- Captive New Zealand zoo frogs living in ponds of
fluoridated water (0.94 ppm) suffered increased rates of bone
disease, “consistent with skeletal
fluorosis” and mortality according to published research

In 2012,
the following joined
hundreds of communities that stopped or rejected fluoridation: